July 9

With summer speeding by at a rapid clip and many hours of screen time in the books (for all of us), I decided that the kiddos and I would do something today. So this morning we swung by Kristine's place to pick her up, hit the Starbucks drive-thru, and headed east to Brentwood to pick some fresh fruit.

After a minor detour in the wrong direction, we arrived at our destination --The Farmer's Daughter-- and snagged some buckets (and a little later, a pair of wagons). First we traversed the rows of peach trees, and then we moved over to the apricots. The trees toward the back of the orchard teemed with pretty orange-y fruit, and we picked and gently poked until we'd gathered several pounds of each kind and headed for the exit.

It was, in just about every way possible, a very nice trip, marked by great company, lots of delicious fruit, beautiful skies, a comfortable temperature, and no discernible damage to my windshield after a rock from a dump truck smacked into it on the freeway with such force that we all jumped in surprise. So yep: I'm grateful for every single bit of it.